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Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP. - page 655. (Read 2032266 times)

legendary
Activity: 1204
Merit: 1002
Gresham's Lawyer
November 25, 2014, 09:22:53 AM
Says the guy who wants to change the source to increase block size.
The source code has already been changed - to add in the 1 MB block size limit.

We were promised it was temporary.

Yes, when Satoshi put in the limit, he also reassured us on its temporary nature by describing the mechanism to change it (by adding a higher block size starting at a far future block so that there would be adequate time for upgrades and get us past the HARD fork issue.). ...I have my own ideas on the best ways to do that.  Somewhat better than Gavin's proposal, and only a little more complicated.

Its not something we've done though.  So when folks say things like "no problem if 2SHA-2 256 is cracked by quantum, we'll just change the algorithm", I cringe when I hear that word "just".  It doesn't belong, it is not a minor change and it doesn't make sense to minimize the impact and challenge.

...

In some ways, a SOFT fork such as SCs present similar challenges.  In some ways it is easier but in others it is harder.  Compatible and non-compatible software/hardware can run at the same time and on the same chain.  The security profile gets a little complicated there.  A MM'd SC can be mined by equipment that can't process an SPV (and so would accept any attempt as valid).

The economic impact is also easy to underestimate, and assumptions about things for which we have no evidence and only untested theory are simply insane.

Look at the number of times the word "will" is used to make some untested theory sound like it is a proven fact.  Doing so is likely to make any scientist (or engineer) cringe with contempt for the author.  It is something I struggle with, because although I agree with the notion of exploring the innovation of SC, and working toward adding it to the Bitcoin tool belt of possible solutions for certain problems...  We kill that possibility by making unsupportable claims about an uncertain future.  It is so easy to do bad marketing in this space because just about ALL the real "customers" are so much smarter and more knowledgeable than the marketing folks on what they are pushing.  Everyone sees when the conclusions are assumed in the argument, most are just too polite to say much about it.

The marketing folks should consider their audience when posting here.

It doesn't make sense to minimize the impact and challenge.
legendary
Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002
November 24, 2014, 09:50:57 PM
very good sign IMO.

Edit : this thread is an extension of this beast:

Gold: I Smell a Trap


What gold an Bitcoin have in common is that they are both inherent storages of value, and have two fold purpose: both can be used as an investment and as a form of currency.

MalboroMan

absolutely.  i've avoided the word "investment" in deference to SOV but i kinda view them the same.  clearly, i bought BTC in expectation that it would go UP in value, not just stay flat.  hence, the title of this thread.  the upside potential is enormous IF we can keep these apparatchiks from changing the source code which will screw up Bitcoin as Sound Money and change it into a WoW trading platform.  keeping Bitcoin as Money will allow us to consume the fiat Forex markets and gold itself.  we are on our way but just at the beginning.  the apparatchiks will become rich if they jump on board even now.  in the end, we want to force all outsiders to have to "buy in" to the BTC currency unit on the main blockchain which will send us to the Moon and provide badly needed revenue to our security providers, the miners.

Says the guy who wants to change the source to increase block size.

i don't want to do anything.  but i will go along with whatever Gavin and the others decide together.  if they decide to leave it, fine.

at least it will be done on mainchain and doesn't involve breaking Bitcoins sound money function.
legendary
Activity: 1400
Merit: 1013
November 24, 2014, 09:48:53 PM
Says the guy who wants to change the source to increase block size.
The source code has already been changed - to add in the 1 MB block size limit.

We were promised it was temporary.
legendary
Activity: 1904
Merit: 1002
November 24, 2014, 09:46:50 PM
very good sign IMO.

Edit : this thread is an extension of this beast:

Gold: I Smell a Trap


What gold an Bitcoin have in common is that they are both inherent storages of value, and have two fold purpose: both can be used as an investment and as a form of currency.

MalboroMan

absolutely.  i've avoided the word "investment" in deference to SOV but i kinda view them the same.  clearly, i bought BTC in expectation that it would go UP in value, not just stay flat.  hence, the title of this thread.  the upside potential is enormous IF we can keep these apparatchiks from changing the source code which will screw up Bitcoin as Sound Money and change it into a WoW trading platform.  keeping Bitcoin as Money will allow us to consume the fiat Forex markets and gold itself.  we are on our way but just at the beginning.  the apparatchiks will become rich if they jump on board even now.  in the end, we want to force all outsiders to have to "buy in" to the BTC currency unit on the main blockchain which will send us to the Moon and provide badly needed revenue to our security providers, the miners.

Says the guy who wants to change the source to increase block size.
legendary
Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002
November 24, 2014, 09:43:51 PM
very good sign IMO.

Edit : this thread is an extension of this beast:

Gold: I Smell a Trap


What gold an Bitcoin have in common is that they are both inherent storages of value, and have two fold purpose: both can be used as an investment and as a form of currency.

MalboroMan

absolutely.  i've avoided the word "investment" in deference to SOV but i kinda view them the same.  clearly, i bought BTC in expectation that it would go UP in value, not just stay flat.  hence, the title of this thread.  the upside potential is enormous IF we can keep these apparatchiks from changing the source code which will screw up Bitcoin as Sound Money and change it into a WoW trading platform.  keeping Bitcoin as Money will allow us to consume the fiat Forex markets and gold itself.  we are on our way but just at the beginning.  the apparatchiks will become rich if they jump on board even now.  in the end, we want to force all outsiders to have to "buy in" to the BTC currency unit on the main blockchain which will send us to the Moon and provide badly needed revenue to our security providers, the miners.
legendary
Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002
November 24, 2014, 09:38:52 PM
here's the other part of Andreas quote that i missed:

“I would count myself as one of them. I understand parts of bitcoin, but I don’t think I can predict where this thing is going. I don’t think I can predict even a fraction of the applications that are likely to be built on bitcoin. None of us know. This is unchartered territory. The reason it’s unchartered territory is because nothing like bitcoin has ever happened before."
member
Activity: 70
Merit: 10
November 24, 2014, 09:37:22 PM
very good sign IMO.

Edit : this thread is an extension of this beast:

Gold: I Smell a Trap


What gold an Bitcoin have in common is that they are both inherent storages of value, and have two fold purpose: both can be used as an investment and as a form of currency.

MalboroMan
legendary
Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002
November 24, 2014, 09:30:49 PM

yeah. poor billionaires  Roll Eyes

they should've asked cypherdoc before trusting some of the most competent and well educated people in the sphere.

given i am probably the first VC to have ventured into the space in a significant way, yes, it probably would've been a good idea.  problem is, i don't have a need or desire to reveal or display myself out in public as an "authority" even tho my early involvement could have easily allowed me to do so given the quality of Bitcoin assessment i see from guys like you.

look at what Andreas said last night which is very true to this day:

“(It’s) a good idea. Because the truth is very few people really understand what bitcoin is exactly, and how it works,” he says.

“And I don’t mean a few politicians; I mean very few people in general really really understand bitcoin."


http://www.startupsmart.com.au/financing-a-business/gst-on-bitcoin-would-be-monumentally-stupid-says-digital-currency-expert/2014112413685.html

i've always said that "most ppl are going to lose money investing in cryptocurrencies"-cypherdoc.

that is going to be so true as i keep seeing idiots throwing their hard earned money at all the wrong places.  i can't imagine alot of these Blockstream investors really understanding Bitcoin as well as me and others in this thread.  we've been discussing the high level economic and game theories here for years.  we're not deeply technical as guys like gmax but i understand Bitcoin pretty darn well from a technical side.  and i see that as an advantage, not a liability.  experience counts as well out in the real world of finance.

this is how you tell we are NOT in a bubble.
legendary
Activity: 1260
Merit: 1116
November 24, 2014, 09:25:02 PM
but the seperation of the value from the ledger.



this displays such a lack of understanding about what Bitcoin is it's laughable and sad at the same time.

let me say this loud and clear:  YOU CAN'T DO THAT.

the BTC unit is what drives the miner greed to assemble what is called the blockchain ledger in the first place.  w/o the unit, there is no ledger or blockchain.

and yes, we need that greed to exist on the MC and stay there so that tx fees can grow to a self sustainable level as block rewards decrease.


Thank you! Any objections?
legendary
Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002
November 24, 2014, 09:15:49 PM
but the seperation of the value from the ledger.



this displays such a lack of understanding about what Bitcoin is it's laughable and sad at the same time.

let me say this loud and clear:  YOU CAN'T DO THAT.

the BTC unit is what drives the miner greed to assemble what is called the blockchain ledger in the first place.  w/o the unit, there is no ledger or blockchain.

and yes, we need that greed to exist on the MC and stay there so that tx fees can grow to a self sustainable level as block rewards decrease.
legendary
Activity: 4760
Merit: 1283
November 24, 2014, 08:21:58 PM
poor Blockstream investors.  $21M down the drain on a hair brain idea of separating the currency unit from the blockchain.

that is how you know we are not in a bubble.

yeah. poor billionaires  Roll Eyes

they should've asked cypherdoc before trusting some of the most competent and well educated people in the sphere.

...

I'm sure they all subscribe to his newsletter.  I mean it's probably worth the dirt-cheap price for a good chuckle now and then.

legendary
Activity: 1722
Merit: 1004
November 24, 2014, 08:19:37 PM
...

I like gmax and his work. I have never met him(he does not know me) but I understand what how and why he wants to say.
 => He is not techno-communists.


It is not easy to understand. It is all about math logic.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/pay-to-contract-with-forgability-using-a-chameleon-hash-318279

Quote
I am fascinated by Tim May's crypto-anarchy. Unlike the communities traditionally associated with the word "anarchy", in a crypto-anarchy the government is not temporarily destroyed but permanently forbidden and permanently unnecessary. It's a community where the threat of violence is impotent because violence is impossible, and violence is impossible because its participants cannot be linked to their true names or physical locations.

Until now it's not clear, even theoretically, how such a community could operate. A community is defined by the cooperation of its participants, and efficient cooperation requires a medium of exchange (money) and a way to enforce contracts. Traditionally these services have been provided by the government or government sponsored institutions and only to legal entities. In this article I describe a protocol by which these services can be provided to and by untraceable entities.

...


Just in case anyone's wondering (since it wasn't cited), that quote is from Wei Dai's 1998 "b-money" proposal: http://www.weidai.com/bmoney.txt
legendary
Activity: 1372
Merit: 1000
November 24, 2014, 08:14:23 PM
poor Blockstream investors.  $21M down the drain on a hair brain idea of separating the currency unit from the blockchain.

that is how you know we are not in a bubble.

yeah. poor billionaires  Roll Eyes

they should've asked cypherdoc before trusting some of the most competent and well educated people in the sphere.

btw I will repeat, just as an attempt to maybe drive the point home one last time, that the concern is not separating the unit from the blockchain (which is technically not true of sidechains anyway) but the seperation of the value from the ledger.


Oh yes, that makes all the difference. I feel good now, I can own part of a ledger, that has been separated from it's value, how does this add more value to the ledger again?  Earlier, I was questioning the essence of your position on the SC debate, and that was, why is it assumed that we need to separating the value stored in the ledger? This argument is missing from your input.  

To be honest I like to learn, and the lessons that cost the most, have a big impact.
If you are familiar with my history in this thread, I thought Cypher was a doof (sorry cypher). I never engaged just observed for a long time. I studied everything Bitcoin, I beveled it was a digital p2p currency and going to take over the world, anyway I thought gold was for Boomers, and dead, but after reading the counter arguments here I though Gold was about to boom and I had been wrong, little did I know it was at its top. I cashed out a lot of bitcoin at about $10 and bought gold, I was sick of cypher always closing the argument by looking at the statistics. Gold collapsing. Bitcoin up. they were dependent on the time he made the claim and not relevant at the moment back then .

I was so cretin in my belief that Bitcoin was Currency, I have lots of data, I tracked the money velocity, the total trade on SR, I monitored 3 exchanges, I had analysed, and predicted each bull and bear run up until then I was convinced that based on the fundamentals that Bitcoin was going to crash down to about $3 and have a slow slide down as it worked out some economic glitches that I didn't like.

But just then Bitcoin shot up to $260, and left me behind, lots of new info was posted here and I read an article written in about 2007 it talked about Store of Value and why gold has it, and what property makes it,  I've looked for it since but never found it, it changed me thanks whoever posted it.  

The conclusion I came to was Bitcoin could be a currency or a payment network but both those are not what is going on here, what is actually happening is Bitcoin is emerging as a Store of Value, and I changed my strategy.

So when I read stuff that is dicking with the value stored on the ledger, I see people messing with stuff they don't understand, Bitcoin is going to be the SoV, and once that happens it will evolve.
The SoV comes first and foremost, and to get there you can't be tweaking with the idea of separating the value on the ledger, that threatens the very thing that makes Bitcoin grow.  
legendary
Activity: 1512
Merit: 1005
November 24, 2014, 08:07:26 PM
there will be more QE.  do you know what that means?  value will flow to the soundest form of money on the market, just like it has the last 6 yrs.  and which currency has that been?  BITCOIN.

“the unfolding deflationary quagmire into which we are sinking will get worse and there will be more Fed QE.”

SocGen's Edwards: Deflationary 'Quagmire' Will Spur More Fed Stimulus


http://www.newsmax.com/Finance/Societe-Generale-Albert-Edwards-Federal-Reserve-inflation/2014/11/24/id/609261/

don't let the apparatchiks screw things up by changing the source code to their own advantage.

...but but but - bitcoin has to speed up a bit, else we get  Σ1-n[national currencies] -> dollar -> bitcoin

hero member
Activity: 644
Merit: 504
Bitcoin replaces central, not commercial, banks
November 24, 2014, 07:18:45 PM
poor Blockstream investors.  $21M down the drain on a hair brain idea of separating the currency unit from the blockchain.

that is how you know we are not in a bubble.

yeah. poor billionaires  Roll Eyes

they should've asked cypherdoc before trusting some of the most competent and well educated people in the sphere.

btw I will repeat, just as an attempt to maybe drive the point home one last time, that the concern is not separating the unit from the blockchain (which is technically not true of sidechains anyway) but the seperation of the value from the ledger.

legendary
Activity: 1204
Merit: 1002
Gresham's Lawyer
November 24, 2014, 07:16:02 PM

I like gmax and his work. I have never met him(he does not know me) but I understand what how and why he wants to say.
 => He is not techno-communists.


I also like gmax and his work.  We met in AMS in 2013 (and prior to that, though he didn't remember).
He knows me mostly by my writing.  He doesn't like my criticisms of government.  Still we have more in common than we have differences.
I'm not a political guy, don't adhere to any party, but I do love liberty, and I tend to say so right out in public.
I've spent many hours in the company of the "original" cypherpunks so certainly some things have rubbed off on me.

I wouldn't characterise gmaxwell as a communist, but I really wouldn't know if he were.
hero member
Activity: 644
Merit: 504
Bitcoin replaces central, not commercial, banks
November 24, 2014, 07:15:14 PM
i understand what you guys want to do, ie, mathematically enforce all contracts and financial dealings so that force from gvts is unnecessary or even obsoleted.  it's a laudable goal and very understandable.  we are all on the same page with that.

yes, this is our goal. (SCs invented by Blockstream)

Quote
i just disagree with how you're trying to accomplish that.

There is not other theory what can explain how to do it (there are many with errors) . SC is the first idea what describes how this can be realized. (I did not find error ... it does not mean there is not error)


You've already pointed out how to do it, the example you cited doesn't affect the mining incentives and thus has no impact on Bitcoin as is. 

Federated servers use multisig (bitcoin already support multisig). One server(one owner) has one signature. You choose how much server do you trust N and how many of them have to sign M.  => M of N  ( eq. 3 of 5 )

Quote
Once sidechains with a federated peg are in use, the addition of SPV verification to Bitcoin script can be seen as merely a security upgrade to reduce the trust required in the system. Existing sidechains could simply migrate their coins to the new verification system. This approach also opens additional security options: the DMMS provided by mining is not very secure for small systems, while the trust of the federation is riskier for large systems. A sidechain could adaptively use both 530 of these approaches in parallel, or even switch based on apparent hashrate.

Federated and offchain models on a large scale are a danger to the miners incentive.

Pick your poison

Citation needed, this is just conjecture

my position is clear, dont make the protocol change.

just because the impact is belittled in the whitepaper calling it a mere security upgrade, doesn't make your argument. it's not a mere security upgrade, its a huge change to the protocol that alters the incentive system that secures Bitcoin. it may be a mere change to a developers who've go to dev, but it's has economic impacts you repeatedly undermine.  

 FTFU
"the addition of SPV verification to Bitcoin script can be seen as merely a security upgrade as a way to final separate the value on the block chain from BTC the asset to reduce the trust required in the system."

Maybe they are undermined because of your failure to illustrate these dangers in details and in plausible context?

The last part just goes to show you and your teamate stubbornness and incapacity to recognize that the value is seperated from the Blockchain everyday through schemes much less legitimate and or secure than what sidechains potentially provide.
legendary
Activity: 1260
Merit: 1116
November 24, 2014, 07:14:11 PM
there will be more QE.  do you know what that means?  value will flow to the soundest form of money on the market, just like it has the last 6 yrs.  and which currency has that been?  BITCOIN.

“the unfolding deflationary quagmire into which we are sinking will get worse and there will be more Fed QE.”

SocGen's Edwards: Deflationary 'Quagmire' Will Spur More Fed Stimulus


http://www.newsmax.com/Finance/Societe-Generale-Albert-Edwards-Federal-Reserve-inflation/2014/11/24/id/609261/

don't let the apparatchiks screw things up by changing the source code to their own advantage.

Or gold Tongue
legendary
Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002
November 24, 2014, 07:12:22 PM
there will be more QE.  do you know what that means?  value will flow to the soundest form of money on the market, just like it has the last 6 yrs.  and which currency has that been?  BITCOIN.

“the unfolding deflationary quagmire into which we are sinking will get worse and there will be more Fed QE.”

SocGen's Edwards: Deflationary 'Quagmire' Will Spur More Fed Stimulus


http://www.newsmax.com/Finance/Societe-Generale-Albert-Edwards-Federal-Reserve-inflation/2014/11/24/id/609261/

don't let the apparatchiks screw things up by changing the source code to their own advantage.
legendary
Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002
November 24, 2014, 07:07:46 PM
poor Blockstream investors.  $21M down the drain on a hair brain idea of separating the currency unit from the blockchain.

that is how you know we are not in a bubble.
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